Adobe Online Marketing Suite Success Story
Under Armour
Leading performance apparel company uses the Adobe® Online
Marketing Suite, powered by Omniture®, to create an engaging online
shopping experience and boost conversion rates
Under Armour
www.underarmour.com
Industry
•Retail
•Apparel
Challenges
•Optimizing online content for higher
conversion rates
•Gaining visibility into customer
behaviors
•Creating a consistent online and
offline shopping experience
•Making brand assets available to all
channels and users
Solution
•Online analytics
•Content optimization
•Digital asset management and rich
media
Under Armour is using the Adobe
Online Marketing Suite to create a
rich online shopping experience,
resulting in higher conversion rates
and increased sales.
Results
•Achieved a 300% lift in conversion
by re-engaging customers who
abandoned a sale
•Unified online and offline
engagement metrics for a
comprehensive online marketing
strategy
•Created a consistent message and
experience across sales channels
•Accelerated content and messaging
development
High performance goes high tech
From grass roots to pros around the world, Maryland-based Under Armour strives to make all athletes better
through passion, science, and the relentless pursuit of innovation. With its unique blend of high-tech athletic
apparel and cutting-edge image, the company has staked its claim as a market leader in the multi-billion
dollar athletic equipment industry.
Today, Under Armour’s online sales channel represents a growing percentage of overall sales. For the
pioneering apparel, footwear, and accessories company, the online sales and marketing channel also plays a
vital role in the company’s broader marketing strategy, because it provides an exciting avenue for customers
to interact with the brand through dynamic digital experiences.
“With the Adobe Online Marketing Suite, our brand can do more with less. We have greater insight into
how our online retail channel performs at all levels and can control every aspect of our e-marketing efforts
from a single platform. We can achieve greater customer engagement and retention, higher sales, and
excellent returns on our investment, without adding staff or other expenses,” says Beau Kemeys, Manager
of Web Analytics & Optimization at Under Armour.
Integrating online marketing activities
Under Armour uses the Adobe Online Marketing Suite to capture, analyze, and act upon customer website,
e-mail marketing, and social media engagement. The company continues to deliver more relevant, enticing
content that drives conversion rates and higher sales through the integrated marketing suite that includes
Adobe Scene7®, as well as other Adobe solutions including components of the Adobe Flash® Platform, Adobe
Creative Suite® 5, Adobe ColdFusion®, and Adobe Acrobat®.
“Under Armour has ‘grown up’ with Adobe’s best-of-breed solutions that enable us to design, develop, and
deliver world class digital experiences to all our customer touch points,” said Brian McManus, director of
technology at Under Armour.
In the past, the company was limited to high-level user interaction metrics such as page visits, orders, and
revenues per product. With the help of Adobe Consulting, for Omniture technology, Under Armour conducted
a comprehensive audit of its website and e-mail marketing channel. The company determined that leveraging
web analytics and optimization solutions to modify e-mail marketing campaigns, website content, and
purchase suggestions for customers could dramatically boost its online revenues without incurring
additional expenses.
Using the integrated Adobe solutions, Under Armour can effectively marry information from multiple user
touch points. The more holistic view of customer interactions results in better decision making that ultimately
drives higher sales.
Optimizing website content for greater returns
As one of the primary points of contact with customers, it’s important for Under Armour’s website to be easily
navigable, enabling customers to quickly find the products they want, while reinforcing the brand’s identity.
Adobe Scene7 gives customers a new way
to view and interact with products online.
Features such as panning, zooming, and
automatic color change let customers see
products from every angle and in every
available color to help make sure they’re
getting exactly what they want.
“The Adobe Online
Marketing Suite helps the
brand increase sales by
streamlining navigation
and allowing customers to
reach desired products more
quickly, resulting in a better
overall shopper experience.”
Beau Kemeys
Manager of Web Analytics &
Optimization, Under Armour
For years, Under Armour successfully drove heavy traffic volumes to its website through search engine
optimization (SEO) tactics, paid search campaigns, and more recently, attracting visitors through social
media sites such as Facebook. “SEO and paid advertising were initially successful in bringing traffic to
the site, but we were searching for avenues to increase visibility into how to convert that traffic into
higher-value sales,” Kemeys says.
Adobe Online Marketing Suite solutions enable the company to capture and analyze how customers
arrived at the site and their online interactions, including product searches, the content viewed, and
the final steps leading up to a completed or abandoned sale. The reports provide key information to
help optimize content for a more engaging online experience and clues as to how to re-engage lost
sales for higher conversion and revenue.
With the Adobe solutions, Under Armour managers can generate a variety of highly detailed reports
using real-time data captured in multiple systems. The reports are generated from a single console,
and offer virtually limitless segmentation.
Under Armour leverages the segmentation capabilities to generate reports by price point, product line,
and product traits—colors, sizes, men’s, or women’s. These reports also enable decision makers to
compare sales in retail outlets versus online sales to give product teams a comprehensive view of sales
trends. In addition, analysts can compare how interactive elements—like product listings—can affect
conversion and sales rates and then make adjustments on the fly.
The product sales reports highlight the best-selling online products or those for which sales are lagging
behind expectations. From there, products can be repositioned on the website or more heavily
promoted through e-mail campaigns, banners, or recommendations to boost sales.
“The insights we gain can have immediate returns,” explains Kemeys. “For instance, we previously listed
a relatively inexpensive cold-weather cap on one of the lower-traffic pages,” says Kemeys. “After running
a few reports, we saw that when people found the product, it had a remarkably high conversion rate.
We moved it to a higher-profile area of our site, and as a result, we quickly sold out the entire product
inventory. We’re now applying similar strategies to other products to boost overall sales.”
In addition, other reports uncovered important information about how customers navigated the
site to find products and which content they viewed during their experience. This data enabled the
company to refine its search functions to return more relevant results that lead customers directly
to desired products.
“Using the Adobe Online
Marketing Suite, the brand
can create a consistent
message and consumer
experience at every step
of the marketing process,
from first impression to the
click-through. Optimizing
both our landing pages
and our e-mail messaging
to have the same look, feel,
and messaging has helped
increase conversion rates.”
Beau Kemeys
Manager of Web Analytics &
Optimization, Under Armour
“We found that more than 50% of our revenues come from direct pathways and easier product
navigation, rather than just by trying to present engaging images alone,” Kemeys says. “The Adobe
Online Marketing Suite helps the brand increase sales by streamlining navigation and allowing customers
to reach desired products more quickly, resulting in a better overall shopper experience.”
The starting lineup
An important part of providing an engaging, dynamic experience is to constantly test new features,
functionality, and images to discover the right mix to keep customers interacting with the site.
Under Armour wanted an efficient way to test new content and layouts without adversely affecting
customers’ experiences online and potentially hindering sales. “With Adobe solutions, we can test
different layouts and pages side-by-side in real time. It’s proven to be extremely valuable to us,”
Kemeys says.
Adobe Online Marketing Suite solutions used by Under Armour
Solution name
Solution type
Adobe SiteCatalyst
Provides Under Armour managers with actionable, real-time data for
online strategies and campaigns
Adobe Discover
Delivers deep insights and defined segments based on real-time data
about website visitors
Adobe Genesis
Automates data integration with digital marketing capabilities for
consolidated reporting, targeting, and optimization activities
Adobe Test&Target
Enables marketers to continually improve content relevance through the
design and execution of dynamic A/B and multivariate tests and content
targeting
Adobe Recommendations
Automatically promotes relevant content, products, and offers to users
across multiple channels
Adobe Consulting for
Omniture technology
Delivers critical insights into online marketing strategies and solution
implementation
Adobe Scene7
Hosted rich media solution manages, distributes, and dynamically serves
all Under Armour images and brand assets to its channels, internal users,
and external partners
A new way to look at products
Under Armour is passionate about the opportunities that dynamic, captivating imagery has a profound
impact on consumers’ buying behavior. The brand has seen profound impact through the strategic
implementation of Adobe Scene7 solutions for managing content and enhancing visitor experiences.
Under Armour also leverages the Adobe Scene7 platform for managing, enhancing, and delivering
rich content across channels—and managing, collecting, and distributing product imagery and brand
assets across internal teams, retail partner sites, its own website, e-mail marketing campaigns, and
social media pages.
The Scene7 solution plays a pivotal role in defining user experiences on the Under Armour website.
Adobe helps enable the company to scale and automate the delivery of dynamic, interactive product
imagery. Features such as zoom, panning, 360-degree views, and instantly applied color changes give
customers new, inventive ways to view and interact with products.
With Adobe Scene7, the company only has to manage a single master file and is able to dynamically
generate and serve unlimited versions on demand for use on its retail, mobile, social, and experience
sites as well its internal portal. In addition, Under Armour leverages Scene7 Media Portal as a “one stop
shop” for all internal and external audiences to access any product, brand, or point-of-sale content. With
nearly 80% of the company’s sales driven through sporting goods stores, Media Portal enables Under
Armour to seamlessly distribute pre-approved product images that retailers can use in weekly print
publications or on their websites to ensure brand consistency.
With targeted e-mails generated based on
information collected using the Adobe
Online Marketing Suite, Under Armour can
reengage customers after an online sale has
been abandoned. By e-mailing special offers
and product recommendations based on
user preferences and browsing history,
Under Armour lifted conversion by more
than 300%.
“Our goal is to make
shopping online as easy
and enjoyable as it is in a
store. The Adobe Online
Marketing Suite helps
us put the right product
information in front of the
right customer at the right
time. Now, customers get
exactly what they want and
need, whether they’re in the
store or shopping online.”
Beau Kemeys
Manager of Web Analytics &
Optimization, Under Armour
Similarly, the company frequently refreshes product images on its Facebook fan page as a teaser
mechanism to draw users back to the website. To date, Kemeys notes that the company has driven
more than $200,000 in revenue from people who’ve come to the Under Armour website after viewing
content on the Facebook fan page.
An innovative win-back strategy
Even with simplified navigation, enhanced search capabilities, and rich product imagery and displays,
some purchases are abandoned before being finalized. Reengaging customers who’ve abandoned their
purchase is a cost-effective way for Under Armour to improve its relationship with customers and
expand sales opportunities. The company’s overarching strategy is to tie shopping cart abandonment
and browsing behaviors with targeted e-mail campaigns and website optimization to create an
end-to-end acquisition and customer retention program.
Under Armour uses Adobe solutions to execute three strategic tactics aimed at unifying e-mail and
online marketing for stronger—and more profitable—relationships with customers.
First, Under Armour developed an automated abandonment response that leverages real-time website
fall out and shopping cart abandonment reports, to generate special-offer and reminder e-mails for
customers who abandoned their purchases.
“We use business rules based on analyses of an individual shopper’s online behavior and the respective
abandonment points to generate the e-mails, which we send 72 hours after a customer left his or her
order,” Kemeys says. “The strategy has succeeded in generating an average lift in conversion rates of
over 300%.”
The company is also utilizing dynamic product recommendations in its e-mail campaigns to further
enhance offer relevance and improve conversion rates as opposed to previously used manual processes.
For example, once a customer has completed an order online, an order confirmation e-mail is sent along
with relevant product suggestions for future purchases. As a result, the company is able to increase its
up-sell and cross-sell opportunities with product offers that align with customer behaviors.
More importantly, recommendations that feature the same dynamic product imagery and messaging
as on the website present another opportunity for Under Armour to draw users back to the website
for additional shopping.
Systems at a glance
•Adobe Online Marketing Suite.
Components used include:
Adobe SiteCatalyst®
Adobe Discover™
Adobe Test&Target™
Adobe Genesis™
Adobe Recommendations
Adobe Scene7
•Adobe Flash Platform. Components
used include:
Adobe Flash Builder™
Adobe AIR®
Adobe Flash Professional
•Adobe Creative Suite 5
•Adobe ColdFusion
•Adobe Acrobat
Combining the real-time testing and analytics capabilities of the Adobe Online Marketing Suite, Under
Armour can systematically develop content in its display advertising to drive traffic to the website,
where similar messaging and content can be found. “Using the Adobe Online Marketing Suite, the brand
can create a consistent message and consumer experience at every step of the marketing process, from
first impression to the click-through,” Kemeys says. “Optimizing both our landing pages and our e-mail
messaging to have the same look, feel, and messaging has helped increase conversion rates.”
Give them what they want
Under Armour has long been at the forefront of the athletic apparel industry, offering athletes an
extensive line of performance apparel. Its products have garnered the company a vast and loyal
customer base.
For Under Armour, the Adobe Online Marketing Suite is a vital resource for creating consistent,
engaging online shopping experiences. Using a wealth of real-time and historical data, the company
can continually adjust and modify online content to suit an individual’s unique tastes and preferences.
“Our goal is to make shopping online as easy and enjoyable as it is in a store,” says Kemeys. “The Adobe
Online Marketing Suite helps us put the right product information in front of the right customer at the
right time. Now, customers get exactly what they want and need, whether they’re in the store or
shopping online.”
For more information
www.omniture.com/
onlinemarketingsuite
Adobe Systems Incorporated
345 Park Avenue
San Jose, CA 95110-2704
USA
www.adobe.com
Adobe, the Adobe logo, Acrobat, Adobe AIR, Adobe Discover, Adobe Genesis, Adobe SiteCatalyst, Adobe Test&Target, ColdFusion, Creative Suite, Flash, Flash
Builder, Omniture, and Scene7 are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. All
other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
© 2011 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved. Printed in the USA.
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